Moe Lane

It’s been this kind of day.

Kung Fu Fighting, Cee Lo Green

(pause)

Yeah, you really did see that.  And I have no shame.  None! It’s because I don’t have a new iPod yet…

From Cracked.com:

…it was apparently a law in the early 20th century that if you were a European with a camera you weren’t allowed to take photos unless they were glimpses into the mouth of insanity.

Of course, World War I will do that to a culture. Indeed, it’s kind of a central point to movies like Shadow of the Vampire; pretty much every male who lived through that period had seen sufficiently wrong things up close and personal that their definition of “messed up” had gotten pretty… flexible.

Or something.

Moe Lane

…in the blogosphere.  For the record, I still like Herman Cain – but his staff is currently getting really, really, REALLY into a death spiral with this story.  Not to be mean about this: suggesting that Rahm Emanuel would use the Rick Perry campaign as a stalking horse to try to derail Cain’s campaign?  Or that Perry would allow that to happen?  That is what we in this business call crazytalk.

Seriously.  My mind keeps trying to encompass a world where the two would collaborate on anything covert or sneaky without the scheme immediately being brought out screaming into the light by tight-lipped partisan staffers on either side, and failing: it keeps skittering on the surface of that thought like a beetle on a marble egg, always looking for an entrance that just isn’t there.

Just… no.

Moe Lane

…wrestling with audio recordings that somehow acquired a bad case of the snaps, crackles and pops.  First time I’ve done phone interviews in a while, and apparently the equipment wasn’t happy to be woken up.

Grumble grumble SNARL.

I believe that the word that both the senior Democratic Senator from NJ, and the Democratic Congressman from NJ-12, would insist on seeing here would be allegedly.  As in, allegedly former canvass worker Christopher Nastuk was told that it would be, ah, “demographically undesirable” to use African-American canvassers in Holt’s lily-white district.  Or, allegedly the minority canvassers that Nastuk did hire were fired anyway “and replaced by white canvassers whose names were provided by e-mail in a text document titled “nobrolists” — which Nastuk said he took to mean “no bro-thers,” in a disparaging slang.”  Not to mention, allegedly Nastuk got fired after raising a stink about this.  And, finally, allegedly Nastuk and four other plaintiffs took this to court and got a 40K settlement out of Lautenberg and Holt.

No, wait, that last one is a matter of record. (more…)

Essentially, Ben Howe – good colleague, good guy, good videographer – is vying for Charlotte radio station WBT’s Sunday Night talk gig.  Rather than bore you with details about why he must have this gig as part of RedState‘s ongoing program of world media domination, I’ll let him tell you: Ben’s much better at it than I would be anyway.

Ben’s an articulate guy: and, as the video above shows, he has a decent sense of humor.  He’d make a good advocate for us on the air.  Most importantly, if Ben gets the gig I’ll be able to suck up to him and get on the program every so often…

Moe Lane

Why do people send me these things?

…OK, OK, I know perfectly well why people send me these things.

Ohio Woman Claims Granddaughter Snapped Picture of Ghosts Having Sex

An Ohio woman got the full news treatment from a local station after she said her granddaughter snapped a picture of two ghosts. But wait, it gets better. These weren’t just any two ghosts. Apparently, these two ghosts were having sex.

[snip]

You can see the picture below and see if you agree (we’ll refrain from describing it, but suffice it to say if you stare at it long enough you’ll eventually see what Dianne saw):

You will have to click through to see the video, so spoiler after the fold: (more…)

I figure that I’m going to need to refresh my memory on a bunch of topics in the next couple months or so, so I’ll just post what I’m going to be catching up on and let people recommend books.  You can safely assume that I already have a basic working knowledge about everything on the list below: what I’m looking for are books that will let me touch up my existing knowledge base.  Also, I know what I’m not looking for: I’ll go over that in the list.

• Basic breakdown of Islamic religious sects.  Nothing written after 2000.  Nothing that thinks that Islam is ZOMG the Greatest Thing Ever.  Nothing that requires the existence of a global Muslim conspiracy/Islamic hive minds in order to support the thesis.  Nothing that has a variant of the word ‘dhimmi’ in the title.
• Political shenanigans in US Presidential elections. NOTHING WRITTEN AFTER 1999.
• Post-Marx, pre-Lenin Communist thinkers.  Nothing written by a Marxist.  Nothing written by a person who takes Marxism seriously as an economic/political theory.  Nothing boring as hell (which is always a problem when it comes to Marxism).
• A general survey of dystopian fiction.   …I can’t think of anything besides “Nothing boring as hell.”

That should do it.

Lobachevsky, Tom Lehrer

In-joke.

Perry plans to end federal ethanol subsidies, by the way.

Texas governor and Republican Presidential candidate Rick Perry participated in a Presidential manufacturing forum today in Pella, Iowa (hosted by the Vermeer Corporation): and it’s pretty interesting viewing.

(The entire forum (and transcript) can be seen here.)

Governor Perry answered questions from both the moderators and the audience: if I had to sum up fifteen minutes of informed, fairly specific commentary in one sentence it would be “The single largest problem that the USA is facing in terms of job and economic growth is our own regulatory climate.”  Perry was obviously relaxed and confident throughout the proceedings, which leads me to wonder whether a large part of his past public appearance issues have been due to lingering pain from his recent back surgery.  Certainly he was knowledgeable and engaging throughout this particular event.

(more…)

Assuming that it’s not just some ruthless capitalist making a buck.  In which case: Go, Team Adam Smith.

I want to show you something.  It’s called the Occupy – A Grown-Up Coloring Book Novel*, and while Hot Air is fully justified in eye-rolling it to the oblivion that such a thing deserves I’d like to point out my immediate observation** was as follows: Hey, guess what’s not on that cover?

That’s right: liberal arts majors.  Or social science ones.

Guess they had some difficulty coming up with a suitable candidate…

Moe Lane (crosspost)

(more…)

Sorry: it’s just that now that it’s a year before the election, it’s time for all those Anti-Obama Ads That Write Themselves that we’ve kept referring to for the last few years.  For example:

Via the RNC.  Hey, notice how they haven’t done anything stupid lately?